Blackacre #1 – Review

The Story: A post-apocalyptic society sends out agents to protect their way of life.

Quick review: This comic is just a notch below. It isn’t terrible by any means and I certainly wouldn’t look funny at anyone who purchased it, but neither is it great and given the number of really high quality comics on the market these days, I wonder where “okay” comics fit into the marketplace.

The story is post-apocalypse with a twist. Rather than everything being a horrible wasteland, the idea is that some wealthy businessmen saw the collapse coming and bought a big expanse of land from the US government. There they established a new, self-sufficient society that could survive the apocalypse in high-style. Not only do they survive, but they still have all the trappings of civilized society: schools, new clothes, politics, etc. It’s a very different vision of the apocalypse than Rick & Co. from The Walking Dead gobbling expired dog food straight from the can. Of course, the rest of the world is kinda a mess and the idea is that this civilized Blackacre is willing to go to some pretty extreme lengths to maintain their quality of life and we meet a solider who is about to be turned into one of their unwitting pawns. For me, this all comes down to character building. There’s no character in this first issue that I want to know more about. If you compare it to I Love Trouble #1 that also came out this week, there is no character in Blackacre who has 1/10 the personality of Felecia from ILT. I want to know more about Felecia from ILT, but these dudes in Blackacre just aren’t very interesting. Perhaps it is because they’re all such stereotypes? The politicians and business leaders are all clean-cut and have sinister motives, the solider who is our protagonist is duty-driven and noble, etc. I feel like I know where this is going: the protagonist will get sent on his mission, eventually learn that Blackacre is evil, then Blackacre will try to kill him but he’ll somehow turn the tables on them because the leaders of Blackacre didn’t know what kind of man they were dealing with….. Perhaps the story has a few twists along the way – in fact, I’m sure it does – but I feel like I know what will happen and that is NOT a good thing.

The art is serviceable, but not good enough to save a story that needs a little assistance. It’s just very straight-forward, semi-realistic comic book art. In this age of internet-hyperbole, people always make you feel like failing to say the word “great” means that something “sucks”. That’s not the case here. This art is okay and is neither detracting from or adding to the story. If the art were worse, this would be a lost cause. But, if it were better, this comic might have a better critical chance.

Conclusion: Not a bad comic and if you’re really into possible apocalyptic settings, this might be worth a look. But it isn’t a great comic either.

Grade: C

– Dean Stell

Grade

Conclusion

http://matchesmalone.wordpress.com Matches Malone

Second C review I’ve read today. I’m going to quit while I’m behind…

dfstell

Yeah….I hate to put people off a title, but when there are 250-300 comics coming out in a month, your pull list has to be pretty deep before I can recommend buying “C” books. Even those of us who read 10+ books per week don’t need to dip down to the “C” level.

It’s also a good reminder that creator-owned books aren’t always awesome. Sometimes they’re done by newer guys who are just getting started – maybe they improve, maybe they don’t.